ASIFA-Hollywood announced all the nominations for its upcoming 45th Annie Awards, the annual award ceremony dedicated to honour the best accomplishments in the field of animation. The event is scheduled for Saturday, February 3, 2018, at the University of California’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles, where the winners will be revealed.

Pixar’s latest hit Cocomanaged to earn the most nominations of that year with a total of 13. Among those was “Best Animated Feature”, nominated alongside Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, Cars 3 (another Pixar film), Despicable Me 3, and The Boss Baby. Coco also gained individual achievement nominations in directing, music, writing, voice acting, character design, production design, character animation, and storyboarding.

[Disney/Pixar]

Not far behind Coco is Cartoon Saloon’s The Breadwinner, which got 10 nominations. The hand-drawn Irish film is nominated for individual achievements for directing, music, character design, production design, writing, and editing. It also got a spot in “Best Animated Feature – Independent” along with In This Corner of the World, Loving Vincent, Napping Princess, and The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales.

On the television side, DreamWorks’s Trollhuntersand Disney Television Animation’s Mickey Mouse were the top-nominated shows by getting six nominations each. Close behind was Adult Swim’s fifth season of Samurai Jack, which got four nominations.

[Disney]

For the juried awards, four veterans of animation will be awarded the Winsor McCay Award for their contribution to the medium, which includes British animator James Baxter, SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg, and animation duo Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis of Canada. The 2D animation software TVPaint will receive the Ub Iwerks Award for technical achievement, while the rubber hose-inspired video game Cuphead will get the Special Achievement Award, and animation historian Didier Ghez will earn the June Foray Award.

As a special honour, a certificate of merit will be awarded David Nimitz for his caretaking of the late June Foray, who was the founding member of ASIFA-Hollywood and creator of the Annie Awards. Foray passed away in July earlier this year at the age of 99.

In conclusion, a major congratulations to all talents who are nominated for the 45th Annie Awards!

About Karl Smith

Deep down in New Zealand, Karl "Karlamon" Smith is a Kiwi who is passionate in animation, seeing it as an artistic medium that expresses vast creativity and brings unique characters and worlds to life. Whenever an animation-related fact pops up, it will more than likely be cemented in his brain for a long time. Some of his favourite animated movies include Zootopia, Balto, Bolt, Over the Hedge, The Fox and the Hound, the How to Train Your Dragon series, The Iron Giant, and The Prince of Egypt.
Prior to contributing to Rotoscopers, Karl has served as a bureaucrat on Ice Age Wiki, and a moderator/site builder/news reporter on Animation Source. Karl is also a Computer Science graduate who is now studying Digital Design in university. That, and with his additional fascination in aviation, he hopes someday to be both an animator and a pilot (if that is even possible).

I’m surprised that Boss Baby was nominated for
best feature over Lego Batman. Now I’m one of
the few people who did not really care for Lego
Batman, but it’s still surprising that a movie with
such good reviews was beaten by a movie that
only got ok reviews. Also interesting that Pony
was not nominated for anything, but I guess that
was expected.

In addition, based on the nominations Ferdinand
got, looks like it’ll turn out to be an decent movie.

Manuel Orozco

I’m going to wait until after New Years possibly to see it

Manuel Orozco

The Animated Feature non independent competition seems interesting. I might go see Coco today with my dad. Still refuse to see Boss Baby. So I want Cars 3 to win the most. I hope Tangled takes home awards too because it’s a great show.